many divines, statesmen, and patriots, ancient and modern, have concurred in representing the stage as replete with danger. I might refer you, would time admit, to the observations of Tertullian, Augustine, and many others of the ancients. I might refer you to the practice of the church in the primitive and early ages. Her converts were required, at their baptism, to" renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world;" by which, it has been asserted, was principally meant the playhouse. I might refer you to the testimony of most wise and pious divines of every denomination in later ages. I might refer you to Archbishops Usher and Tillotson, and many others of the Established Church: to Watts, Doddridge, Barker, and Orton, among the Dissenters. Archbishop Tillotson's language is peculiarly strong and emphatical on the subject. Candid and gentle as he was, he calls the playhouse "the Devil's chapel, and the school and nursery of lewdness and vice" and speaking of parents who take their children there, he calls them monsters; and adds, "I had almost said, devils."—I only remark, here, that, were it necessary, I could give you a long list of moralists and divines of the present age, who, with united testimony, consider the theatre as a school of dissipation, immorality, and crime.

Now, Sir, allow me to ask, Can you wonder, to use your own words, that "in this enlightenedtown plays are received with disgust, and treated with neglect?" Can you think it strange that the

people are instructed "from the pulpit to consi der them as dangerous to religion, and engines of the tempter to seduce them from their religious. duties?" Ah, Sir, you little thought that many of the bitter ironies which your hatred to religion prompted you to indite, would be some of the highest compliments that you would ever have it in your power to pay the inhabitants of the town which you attempt so severely to censure. O highlyfavoured Reading! proceed in thy career of discountenancing immorality and opposing vice; and in proportion to thy exertions, "thy peace shall be as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea !”

You appear, Sir, to hold the performers in these schools of morality in the highest estimation. The poor blind preachers of Reading, who have

cast a dimness over their own sight," alias, put out their own eyes, "endeavour to prevent their hearers from benefiting by the light of others," (these players,) "whose creed may be equally orthodox, though somewhat more enlightened !!! Benefiting by the light of a player!—the orthodor creed of a player!—more enlightened than that of a Christian minister!-I never before, Sir, knew any thing of the light, or of the orthodoxy, or of the creed, of a player; though I have often heard of the character of this class of the community, whom, for illuminated and orthodox belief, you rank above the preachers of the gospel.

The character of a player among the Romans was reckoned infamous; and when a Roman turned actor, he was immediately degraded. The story of the unfortunate Laberius exhibits, in a striking point of view, the odium which was attached to the profession of an actor by this people, whom you assert to have been indebted for their civilization and morality to the stage. Though a Roman knight, he was urged by Julius Cæsar, at an advanced period of life, to appear on the stage, to recite some of his own works. He consented, at length, with reluctance; but felt his character as a Roman citizen disgraced, and shewed his resentment, by warning the audience against the tyrant, by whose mandate he was obliged to appear before them. "After having lived," said he, " sixty years with honour, I left my house, this morning, a Roman knight, but shall return to it, this evening, an infamous stage-player. Alas! I have lived a day too long." Cæsar, however, restored him to the rank of knight, which he had lost by appearing on the stage; but, to his mortification, when he went to take his seat among his order, no one offered to make room for him, and even his friend Cicero said, "Recepissem te, nisi anguste sederem."—A bold saying of Sobrius the tribune, to Nero the Roman emperor, equally illustrates the fact I have asserted. Being asked by the emperor, why he, who was one of his personal guards, had conspired against

him, he answered, "I loved you as much as any man, as long as you deserved to be loved; but I began to hate you, when, after the murder of your wife and mother, you became a charioteer, a COMEDIAN, and a buffoon."- Such were the sentiments of the Romans respecting actors. What did the primitive Christians think of them? In the first ages of the church, no player could be admitted into her communion, till he had renounced his profession. Some of the ancient councils ordained that they should be excommunicated. In the English laws they were formerly denominated rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars. But what is the reason that the profession of a player should generally be deemed so ignominious? Because all talents, however excellent, when applied to the single purpose of amusing the idle and vicious, become contemptible. Because, as actors have generally been persons of loose morals, (I do not say without any exception,) so their employment directly leads to the corruption of the heart. Because, appearing continually in an assumed character, or being employed in preparing for it, they must be in danger of losing all sense of sincerity and truth. And because, sustaining so many characters of others, at length they retain none of their own. It is impossible

* See an able illustration of this subject in Dr. Witherspoon's Serious Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage. See also an excellent Essay on the Stage, by the Rev. John Styles.

to entertain respect for a player; and there is not a family of any consideration in Britain, which would not consider itself disgraced, if any of its members were to embrace this profession. What might be the feelings and sentiments of the Stranger in Reading on having a brother or a son among the enlightened and orthodox believers who exhibit on the stage, and who have been so highly extolled by him, I leave to the decision of his own mind; fully persuaded myself, that no man who seriously reflects on his future state of responsibility, can any longer continue to be a player.

I shall conclude this brief dissertation with a testimony and an anecdote: the former shall relate to the stage, and the latter to the actor.

Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Johnson, has a remark which strikingly illustrates what I have now advanced. "6 Although it is said of plays, that they teach morality, and of the stage, that it is the mirror of human life; these assertions are mere declamation, and have no foundation in truth or experience on the contrary, a playhouse, and the regions about it, are the very hot-beds of vice. How else comes it to pass, that no sooner is a playhouse opened in any part of the kingdom, than it becomes surrounded by a halo of brothels? Of this truth, the neighbourhood of the place I am now speaking of (Goodman's Fields Theatre) has had experience; one parish alone, adjacent thereto, having, to my knowledge, expended the

D